Spontaneous Formation of an Ideal-Like Field-Effect Channel for

Jul 15, 2015 - Spontaneous Formation of an Ideal-Like Field-Effect Channel for Decay-Free Polymeric Thin-Film Transistors by Multiple-Scale Phase Sepa...
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Spontaneous Formation of an Ideal-Like Field-Effect Channel for Decay-Free Polymeric Thin-Film Transistors by Multiple-Scale Phase Separation Horng-Long Cheng,*,† Jr-Wei Lin,† Jrjeng Ruan,*,‡ Chia-Hsien Lin,† Fu-Chiao Wu,† Wei-Yang Chou,† Ching-Hsiang Chen,§,∥ Chung-Kai Chang,⊥ and Hwo-Shuenn Sheu⊥ †

Department of Photonics, Advanced Optoelectronic Technology Center, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan § Graduate Institute of Applied Science and Technology, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 106, Taiwan ∥ Protrustech Corporation Limited, Tainan, Taiwan ⊥ National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsinchu 30076, Taiwan ‡

S Supporting Information *

ABSTRACT: We demonstrate semiconducting polymer-based thin-film transistors (PTFTs) with fast switching performance and an uncommon nondecaying feature. These PTFTs based on widely studied poly(3-hexylthiophene) are developed by incorporating the insulating polymer into the active channel and subjecting the compound to specific, spontaneous multiplescale phase separation (MSPS). An in-depth study is conducted on the interfacial and phase-separated microstructure of the semiconducting/insulating blending active layer and its effect on the electrical characteristics of PTFTs. The polyblends exhibit a confined crystallization behavior with continuously semiconducting crystalline domains between scattered insulatorrich domains. The insulator-rich domains can block leakage current and strengthen the gate control of the channel. A small amount of the insulating polymer penetrates the bottom of the active channel, resulting in effective interface modification. We show specific MSPS morphology of the present blending films to reduce charge trapping effects, enhance charge accumulation, and create a high-seed switching channel. The findings enable us to develop the required morphological conceptual model of the ideal-like field-effect-modulated polymer-based active channel. The polyblend-based PTFTs with MSPS morphology also have promising sensing functions. This study offers an effective approach for overcoming the major drawbacks (instability and poor switching) of PTFTs, thus allowing such transistors to have potential applications. KEYWORDS: semiconducting-insulating frameworks, polyblends, microstructure−property relationships, thin-film transistors, AFM-Raman spectroscopy, electrostatic force microscopy

1. INTRODUCTION Considerable interest has been directed toward organic/ polymeric material-based electronics and photonics. Understanding and further controlling microstructural and morphological properties in organic/polymeric materials is essential for their potential applications in various devices because molecular/chain packing is believed to play a key role in determining the charge carrier behaviors within devices and, thus, electrical performance. Compared with vacuum sublimed organic films, polymer thin-films are extremely attractive because of their easy preparation from solution processes and low cost of manufacturing. For electronic devices, polymer thinfilms possess unique intrachain and interchain charge transport properties and have superior mechanical and thermal stabilities compared with π-conjugated small molecule semiconductors.1 © 2015 American Chemical Society

These unique advantages make polymer thin-films suitable for potential applications in flexible, lightweight, scalable, and lowcost electronics and photonics.1−3 However, polymers with long-chain features may result in poorly ordered crystalline, amorphous, and/or aggregate domains and, consequently, complicated microstructure and morphology of the resulting polymer films.1−5 Meanwhile, the films generally contain a large density of defects and consequently lead to poor and unstable electrical characteristics of electronic devices.6−13 More recently, significant progress has been made in understanding the charge transport capability [charge mobility values in excess Received: May 4, 2015 Accepted: July 15, 2015 Published: July 15, 2015 16486

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b03864 ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2015, 7, 16486−16494

Research Article

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

Figure 1. (a) Schematic illustration of the TFT configuration. The lamellar structure of P3HT is shown. (b) Typical transfer curves (drain current, ID, as a function of gate bias, VG, at a drain-to-source bias, VDS) of P3HT-based TFTs using various blending active layers. The weight percent of PMMA in the films is shown. (c) Comparison of output curves (ID as a function of VDS at various VG) of P3HT-based TFTs with (lines) and without (circles) blending with 75% PMMA as the active layer. (d) Comparison of normalized ID as a function of time at selected operational conditions. ID0 and IDT are the drain current at the initial and at a given time, respectively. The corresponding gate current (IG) of the 25:75 P3HT/PMMA devices is also shown.

of 1 cm2 V−1 s−1, obtained in thin-film transistors (TFTs)]14−16 of conjugated polymers compared with those of π-conjugated small molecule and amorphous silicon TFTs. This breakthrough challenges our understanding of structural-related charge transport properties of polymer films with large disordered areas. However, significant nonideal electrical characteristics could be seen in these polymeric-based TFTs (PTFTs). The major drawback of the use of π-conjugated polymers as the active layer in TFTs is unintentional doping from impurities and/or from oxygen and moisture in ambient air, which leads to an increase in the bulk conductance and results in nonideal electrical characteristics, such as high leakage current in the off-state (Ioff), transconductance degradation under high gate bias, and poor switch characteristics.7−11,14−19 Because this concerned unintentional doping mainly occurs in the amorphous regions, further understanding and control of polymeric micro/nanostructure in the active layer of TFTs is desirable for enhancing the stability and unique electrical properties of π-conjugated polymers. However, the requirements for polymeric microstructures in the active channel to achieve PTFTs with ideal field-effect channels are still unclear; these PTFTs are fast switching and produce stable current output under gate modulation and cutoff leakage pathway. A low Ioff and steep subthreshold swing (S) behavior are important for real electronic applications, particularly with high dynamic performance and low power consumption. PTFTs always exhibit poor environmental and operational stability, which are the main bottlenecks that hinder their commercial applications. To overcome these limitations, several

approaches have been proposed, such as the design and synthesis of new polymers with better MO energy levels against oxidation,14−16 improvement in molecular packing and ordering of the polymer films,4,5,20 and protection of the polymer active layer through encapsulation.19,21 The operational stability of PTFTs continues to improve, but more improvements should be made. Semiconducting and insulating polymer blends or copolymers have attracted considerable research interest.19,21−27 In general, the presence of an insulating component tends to degrade electrical characteristics by diluting the current density of the active layer.22−24 However, several reports showed that semiconducting/insulating polyblends can improve or maintain the electrical characteristics of PTFTs. For example, Arias et al.21 developed semiconducting poly[5,50bis(3-dodecyl-2-thienyl)-2,20-bithiophene] (PQT-12)/insulating poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polyblend-based PTFTs with improved environmental stability. In these transistors, PMMA is self-encapsulated on top of the blends upon an octyltrichlorosilane-treated silicon dioxide (SiO2) dielectric by vertical phase separation. Qiu et al.26 reported poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT; semiconducting component):polystyrene (PS; insulating component) polyblend-based PTFTs with high performance. This high performance is attributed to the formation of interconnected P3HT nanowires embedded in a PS matrix by controlling solvent-assisted solidification. Kergoat et al.27 presented P3HT/PMMA polyblend-based PTFTs with slightly improved Ioff levels. The mobility of these P3HT/PMMA polyblend-based PTFTs is comparable with that of pure P3HT because of the lateral phase 16487

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b03864 ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2015, 7, 16486−16494

Research Article

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces separation of the binary blends. Wu et al.19 reported an enhanced electrical performance of PTFTs by preparing a semiinterpenetrating semiconducting P3HT/insulating PMMA active layer with an interdiffused interface. Semiconducting/ insulating blends offer a simple but useful method for controlling device characteristics by developing an active channel with various microstructures. In this study, we demonstrate that fast-switching PTFTs with an uncommon nondecaying feature (even over a long-term dynamic continuous operation with high gate bias) can be obtained by using semiconducting/insulating polyblends as the active layer with multiple-scale phase-separated (MSPS) morphology. Different from previously discussed polyblendbased PTFTs, the MSPS morphology is a distinct type of polymeric active layer.21−27 This study is the first to observe the current growth and absence of decay in PTFTs, even under continuous DC gate voltage sweep. Furthermore, the PTFTs in this study exhibit several advanced electrical characteristics, such as fast switching, cutoff leakage pathway, and excellent gas sensing. The interfacial and phase-separated microstructure of the blending active layer and its effect on the electrical performance of PTFTs are comprehensively investigated by impedance admittance and polarization-electric field (P−E) analyses, grazing incident X-ray diffraction (GIXD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), electrostatic force microscopy (EFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and AFMRaman microspectroscopy. Finally, studies of the polyblends with MSPS morphology allow us to propose a concept of the active layer for an ideal-like PTFT.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1. Electrical Characteristics of PTFTs. This study employed the standard inverted-coplanar TFT structure with SiO2 as the gate insulator, indium tin oxide (ITO) as the gate, source, and drain electrodes (Figure 1a) as described elsewhere,12 and called it a TFT substrate. Such TFT substrates are durable12 and allow investigation of the effects of the polyblend structure on the electrical characteristics of the PTFT. P3HT/PMMA-blend solutions with different P3HT and PMMA weight ratios were prepared by adding PMMA at various compositions to the P3HT p-xylene solution. All films were prepared from the resulting polyblend solutions on the TFT substrate. Panels b and c in Figure 1 show a comparison of the typical transfer and output characteristics of the P3HT-based TFTs with and without PMMA blending, respectively. In particular, we focus on two significant TFT parameters, namely, S characteristics and Ioff level, which are hard to change by varying TFT structural configurations. The S characteristic reflects the quality of the active channel. A low Ioff and steep S standing are particularly important in real applications and in determining the speed and power of a device. By contrast, μFE is highly dependent on channel dimensions and other parameters (e.g., capacitance and overestimated μFE are observed using highfrequency capacitance and a theoretical dielectric constant). High bulk conductance also leads to an overestimated μFE. Also, the use of a standard MOSFET equation to extract the μFE can give significantly overestimated results.28 Therefore, our focus in this paper is to discuss the factors affecting S and Ioff and operational stability of PTFTs instead of μFE. The pristine P3HT-based TFTs displayed poor S behavior (∼17.0 ± 3.0 V/dec) and a relatively high Ioff level of >10−9 A. The inferior field-effect characteristics in PTFTs are quite common given the easy doping nature of conjugated polymers. The unintentional doping of the polymer film benefits the film’s conductivity even with off-state PTFTs; thus, the Ioff values of most PTFTs reported in the literature are usually higher than 10−7 to 10−9 A.11,13,17 This doping also weakens the gate-tochannel controllability.13,19 After blending P3HT with PMMA, the S and Ioff levels significantly improved with an absence of hysteresis behavior. The P3HT/PMMA (25:75) devices exhibit an optimal S value of 500 μs) is much larger than that of the blending devices (only ∼30 μs). Several previous studies have emphasized that the PMMA modification of the dielectric gate surface is useful in reducing surface traps.32−34 Thus, several PMMA chains have been deduced to diffuse to the bottom of the active channel and hence PMMA-rich thin layer, thereby modifying the SiO2 surface. With increased PMMA content, this finding becomes more significant as Dit decreases. Moreover, the significantly shortened τit, which reflects the trapping−detrapping rate, supports a stable ID in continuous operations through dynamic programming. Interestingly, the 90 wt % PMMA sample exhibited the better Dit and τit values than those of the 75 wt % PMMA sample. This result does not explain the electrical properties of the corresponding PTFTs, and theoretically, the best result should be exhibited by the 75 wt % PMMA sample instead of the 90 wt % PMMA sample. This result may be caused by the excessive amount of PMMA in the channel. This excessive PMMA may have interrupted the conducting channel of P3HT and substantially increased the structural defects as bulk charge traps. The molecular dipoles in the PMMA buffer layer (note: the main dipole is the O = C-OCH3 group, which has a dipole moment of −1.8 D) can be aligned by a high gate electric field (EG) and thus generate a useful dipole field (Ed) to enrich the charge accumulation in the channel and enhance the electrical performance of the organic TFTs.34 The P−E analysis of the MISM diodes (Figure 2b) also provided evidence for the enhanced polarization, such as the charge accumulation caused by the PMMA modification on the P3HT/PMMA (25:75) device. The increased slope of the P−E curve with high EG demonstrates that a high field is necessary to align these randomly incorporated dipoles of the amorphous PMMA to obtain a useful Ed. This observation is in agreement with the previous finding on the pentacene-based TFTs with a PMMA buffer layer.34 The current growth phenomenon of the

kT ln 10 ⎛ e ⎞ ⎜1 + Dt ⎟ e Ci ⎠ ⎝ ⎤ kT ln 10 ⎡ e ⎢1 + ( ϵsD b + eDit )⎥ e Ci ⎣ ⎦

(1)

where k is Boltzmann’s constant, T is temperature, e is electron charge, Ci is gate capacitance, and ϵs is the dielectric constant of the semiconductor. Thus, a low S value reflects a low trap density. For a pristine P3HT channel, the observed Dt was 2.22 × 1013 1/eV·cm2. The best results were obtained using the P3HT/PMMA (25:75) active layer with a Dt of only 1.13 × 1012 1/eV·cm2. The effect of the charge trap on the blending systems significantly decreased. After adding 25, 50, and 90 wt % of PMMA, there was only slight improvement in the Dt of 1.30 × 1013, 1.60 × 1013, and 1.72 × 1013 1/eV·cm2, respectively. Impedance-admittance analyses of an MISM diode configuration31,32 were also performed to extract the Dit and mean interface trap time constant (τit) of the interface of the active layer and gate insulator, as shown in Figure 2a. The frequencydependent conductance at a given VG was measured. The single time constant model was used, and the equivalent parallel conductance (Gp) is given by31

Gp ω

=

qωτitDit 1 + (ωτit)2

(2) 16489

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b03864 ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2015, 7, 16486−16494

Research Article

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

Figure 3. Out-of-plane (solid lines) and in-plane (dashed lines) GIXD spectra of the P3HT:PMMA blending films with different weight percents of PMMA. The fwhm of the (100) peak is also shown. Insets: the corresponding AFM topography (left panels) and phase (middle panels) images and EFM images (right panels). The values of root-mean-square roughness were also indicated on the bottom right corner.

indicate that the resultant blend films were considerably more amorphous than the pristine P3HT films. The phase distribution within the blending film was further explored by obtaining AFM and EFM images. The topographic image of the blending films (inset of Figure 3) given by AFM reveals granular domains with diameters varying from 300 nm to >1 μm. The granular domains are surrounded by network regions of the P3HT/PMMA mixture as an approached status of phase separation. Water contact angle (θ) measurements of the films were also performed. The pure P3HT film shows the θ value of 106.1 ± 0.25°, indicating a hydrophobic feature. With an increasing amount of PMMA in the blend films, the θ values decreased to 101.8 ± 1.64° and 92.2 ± 1.41° of the P3HT/PMMA (25:75) and (10:90) films, respectively. This indicated an increased amount of PMMA on the surface of the blending films. To classify the domains/areas of PMMA and P3HT, we further explored the EFM results (inset of Figure 3, right panels). For the pure P3HT film, the distribution of surface potential was homogeneous with a root-mean-square (RMS) value of only 4.8 mV. Differing for the blending films, the distribution of surface potential varied with larger fluctuations. For the P3HT/PMMA (25:75) film, the RMS surface potential increased to 29.2 mV, which is twice that of the P3HT/PMMA (10:90) film (15.6 mV). It is thus realized that these granular domains with relatively low potential (i.e., the dark area of the EFM image) should be classified as local PMMA-rich domains. By contrast, brighter regions observed on obtained EFM images are related to higher surface potential and therefore include the organization of semiconducting P3HT. Considering both the AFM and EFM images of the P3HT/PMMA (25:75) films, the sizes of local PMMA-rich granular domains are mostly